


No Net Strong Enough

by Walutahanga



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:19:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5466356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does it mean for a family when a child is taken by the Jedi? </p>
<p>(Or; a different take on Obi-Wan's family and Mara Jade's backstory).</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Net Strong Enough

As far back as Owa-San can remember, he was an only child. His parents are firm but loving, and he is the unquestioned centre of their universe. It is lonely sometimes, living out on the remote Stewjon farm, but he has his lessons and his books and he is content.  

When he is thirteen, his mother shows him holos of his older brother, who was sent away to be a Jedi. It is of the two of them as small children, playing in the long grass of the fields. Even so young, Obi-Wan is patient, running ahead, but always stopping and looking back to see that Owa-San has not fallen too far behind. Their hair is the same shade of red-gold, catching the sunlight as they lean over each childish discovery, and when their mother calls, they look up with the same blue eyes and expression of put-upon patience. 

Owa-San looks from the holo to his mother and sees her watching the screen, eyes bright. His throat clenches with something that feels a little like jealousy, but more like there’s something heavy his chest, pressing down on his heart. 

He watches the holo all the way through, then goes into the kitchen and breaks the best china dish. It is the worst thing he’s ever done, and he refuses to apologise. He’s not sorry and he won’t say he is.

He can’t tell his parents why he’s so angry, because he doesn’t know himself.

* * *

He won’t work it out for many years, until he meets his brother as an adult. 

Obi-Wan is in his late twenties, but there is a gravity to him that belongs on a much older man. He speaks with a cultured Coruscant accent that makes Owa-San’s Stewjan drawl twang in his ears, and his stillness makes Owa-San want to fidget. His blue eyes, so like the ones that Owa-San sees in the mirror, are like water, everything passing through undisturbed. He is every inch a Jedi, and Owa-San finally recognises the feeling in his chest that had led him to break his mother’s best china all those years ago. 

Grief.

This is grief. 

Obi-Wan looks at him with sympathy, but no understanding. How could he understand? He is not Owa-San’s brother. The Jedi took that little boy away, and Owa-San’s parents let it happen. Owa-San’s brother is so long gone he might as well be dead, leaving this Jedi in his place. 

“Acceptance is the way of the force, Owen,” Obi-Wan tells him gravely. He uses the same nickname as that long-lost child in the holos, either from some vestige of memory or because his tongue struggles with the Stewjan conjunctions. Owa-San suspects the latter. “You must let that loss go.”

 “Like our parents let you go?” Owa-San retorts shortly.

Obi-Wan is excruciatingly polite and gracious for the duration of his visit. It is a relief when he leaves. He never comes back and Owa-San never sees him again. 

* * *

During the Clone Wars, Owa-San meets a woman. Jan-Way Jade has light blonde hair and eyes as green as a spring field. She laughs when he brings her flowers, then pulls him into the shadow of the barn and kisses him until his toes curl. She turns her nose up at the idea of marriage, then plays an _oroblo_ under his window and proposes the old-fashioned way, down on one knee with a wreath of flowers over one shoulder.

She says nothing when he hears of the Jedi purges, but holds him as he weeps, shedding useless tears for a brother he’d already mourned once.

They have their first child nearly two years after the rise of the Empire. They are no longer living on Stewjon by then. His parents are dead and Kenobi is a dangerous name to possess. Owa-San only avoided execution because he had just married and the Imperials either hadn’t known or had overlooked that Stewjan men took their wives’ last names.

He and Jan-Way change their names and call their daughter something short and bland that could originate from any inner world planet. But in private and between themselves they call her by her proper hyphenated name.

May-Dra. Daughter of spring, bringer of the harvest. Child of sunlight and summer with her mother’s clear green eyes and her father’s red-gold hair.

They gift her with the most hopeful name they can think of, and try to ignore her too intent scrutiny, her unsettling leaps of logic that could be intuition or something else, her insight that is just a little too insightful.

Because they can hide, but they cannot hide _her_. 

* * *

The Empire comes for May-Dra when she is eight years old.

Owa-San watches the stormtrooper carry away his screaming daughter, and wonders if this is anything like how his mother had felt when the Jedi came for Obi-Wan, this sense of fate unspooling rapidly past her control. Had she known, even before then, that her son burned too bright for an ordinary life?

“What about this one?” A stormtrooper asks. His blaster is pressed into the nape of Owa-San’s neck, his knee digging into the small of his back. Jan-Way is already sprawled on the floor, beautiful eyes wide and sightless. From a very great distance, Owa-San hears the other stormtrooper answer.

“Orders are to execute everyone except the girl. Kill him.”

Strangely Owa-San feels no fear. Only a deep acceptance. His muscles loosen and his breathing evens out. Jan-Way’s eyes are as green as the long grass of his childhood. If he concentrates he can almost make out the ghostly image of his brother, looking back to check that he’s following. Strange; he looks like he’s crying.

_Owen_ , he calls, the childish nickname coming from an oddly adult voice. _Force, no. Not you too. Owen –_

Owa-San breathes out, and lets go. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> In the Jedi Apprentice novel "Hidden Past", Obi-Wan believed he had a brother called Owen. This was later revealed to be a vision of the future of Owen Lars (who was not related to him in any way) but this is a basically what-if where he hadn't been entirely wrong. 
> 
> The title comes from the Judith Wright poem "The World and the Child" about a child leaving the innocent wonder of childhood and coming to terms with the realities of adulthood. It felt very appropriate for Owa-San's journey, particularly the line "No net is strong enough to hold the world" which I've interpreted as being about accepting that some things are outside of your control and even seeing a kind of grace in that. Very Jedi-esque.


End file.
